What is a citation?
A citation is your business being named inside the answer an AI engine writes, whether by name, by URL, by phone number or by product.
A citation is your business appearing inside the answer, not next to it. There is no list of ten results for you to be fourth in. Either the answer names you or it does not.
What you'll learn
- The five things that count as a citation
- What does not count, and why the exclusions make the number usable
- Why being named is not always good news
The five forms
| Form | Example |
|---|---|
| Brand | Your company named as a business |
| Product | One of your products named by name |
| Service | Your offering described in the context of your business |
| URL | Your website appearing in the answer |
| Phone | Your number appearing in the answer |
Any one of them makes the check a citation. Several can apply at once, and the platform records which ones were found, because "the engine gave our phone number" and "the engine described our service" are different wins.
What does not count
- A competitor's mention. Obviously, but worth saying: an answer full of your rivals is a check where you were absent.
- A generic term that happens to match your name. If the business is "GRP Tubing Pty Ltd" and the answer discusses GRP tubing the material, that is not you. Matches that survive only because normalisation stripped a legal suffix are rejected.
- A mention that steers people away from you. If the answer names you in order to warn readers off or to recommend somebody instead, it is recorded as a negative mention with negative sentiment, and it is not counted as a citation.
That last exclusion is the one that surprises people, and it is the right call. A count that includes "avoid this company" alongside "we recommend this company" is a count you cannot use for anything.
Being named is not the same as being recommended
Read your Proof rows for the first month. The description an engine gives of you is frequently not the one you would give, and it is often lifted from a source you do not control. That is a fixable problem, and you can only fix what you have read.
Why a citation is worth more than a click used to be
A click was the start of a conversation you then had to win. A citation is a recommendation already made, by something the buyer currently trusts more than they trust your homepage. The buyer arrives, if they arrive at all, already shortlisted.
Which is also why absence costs more than it used to. There is no page two.
Try this in Outercite
Ask the assistant "Show me the exact sentences AI wrote about us." Then check whether any of them name you in order to send the reader elsewhere.
Related
How a citation is counted
What has to be true before a citation is recorded, and what the confidence score means.
Proof
The verbatim sentences.
Glossary
Every term in one place.
Last updated on
Reading your first answer
What every part of an assistant answer means: the figure in the sentence, the rows in the panel, the basis badges, and the footer that says what was counted.
How a citation is counted
What has to be true before a check becomes a counted citation, what the confidence score measures, and how to use it in a decision.